Texture paint - PBR with stencil
I have been pondering this as well while trying to figure out the most efficient pbr texturing workflow without shelling out for substance painter (just yet), and mixer is not quite there and neither is armor paint.
What I have so far is not ideal and involves some annoying texture switching and a paid blender addon (Layer Painter) but its the best I have figured out so far.
This layer painter addon has a pretty good workflow and is fairly similar to the basic layer workflow in substance painter and mixer.
So to paint pbr layers as a stencil I enable the channels I want active on a layer like albedo, normals &amp; AO.
I create a new paint texture for each channel
I load my stencils albedo source image and move the stencil into the right location on the mesh and enable painting on the albedo channel and paint in what ever area i need on the mesh.
I dont move the mesh or the stencil and just change the stencil texture to the normal stencil source, disable the albedo channel in layer painter, enable the normal channel and paint over the same area.
I do the same for AO and although it is not ideal and requires alot of texture switching and an extra addon Its the best I have got so far.
I will ask the dev if they could add the ability to add a material to the Texture/stencil feature so that when we paint with the stencil material it will align to the corresponding channels in the material layer we paint on.
I understand this probably makes little to no sense if you are unfamiliar with the addon so here are some follow up screenshots.